New lattice

Today I am tired. Seriously tired. My weekend was packed with an oyster night, painting of built-ins and replacement of old lattice.

If that doesn’t sound tiring to you, well then I am envious. But add 6+ hours of being outside in what seemed like 100% humidity… I guess it is no surprised I could fall asleep pretty much anywhere tonight. Anyway, the important thing is that I can cross another nagging project off of my list! Our lattice.

I of course have no before picture of this project, but picture nasty, rotten wooden lattice hiding our garbage cans. Except it didn’t hide our cans… it came about 6-8″ shy of covering our recycling bin.

Did I mention it was rotten? So rotten that the lattice simply peeled away and the posts came out of the ground with a few good kicks.

Once the lattice was out of the ground and out of the way, my dad and I got to digging new post holes. Our plan was to dig 18″ holes and cement the new posts into the ground for a more sturdier garbage hider.

Here’s where I add that my bossy dad did most of the work for this project. I assisted and pointed out when he was building things wrong 🙂 He is awesome.

After we dug two holes up front, we built a frame out of pressure-treated 2″x4″s and attached the lattice — I opted for the plastic version instead of the wooden lattice. We plopped it into the holes and made it level before adding dry cement.

Then we started working on the other side. Same thing… dig hole, build frame, attach lattice. When everything was level, we added water to our cement to permanently affix the lattice in the ground. We then started tackling the brick pavers — we smoothed the ground out beneath the already-existing pavers before adding patio sand. We threw some tarp down and placed the stones back in the garbage area. Nice and flat! Woo!

At that point, the cement was dry, so we put all of the dirt back on top of the cement and around the base of the enclosure.

Tah-da!

Buh-bye ugly lattice, hello nicely hidden garbage cans

And in case you were wondering how bad the old lattice really was… here it is waiting to be taken to the dump next to our new stuff. Gross!